Man arrested over murder of schoolboy 33 years ago

By Bob Graham and Sean O'Neill

12:00AM GMT 23 Feb 2001

A MAN has been arrested by police investigating the murder of a schoolboy almost 33 years ago.

The man, who is divorced and in his sixties, is being questioned in connection with the murder of Roy Tutill, 14, who was abducted while hitchhiking home to Brockham, near Dorking, Surrey, in April 1968. The body was found three days later in a copse near the entrance to the then Lord Beaverbrook's estate in Mickleham, Surrey.

He had been sexually assaulted and strangled but was fully clothed apart from his red and grey striped Kingston Grammar School blazer which was left folded on his body. The suspect, who was arrested on Wednesday night in Solihull, West Midlands, moved from his home in Surrey weeks after the murder.

Now employed as a farm labourer, he is also being questioned about two attempted abductions of young boys in the past three years. In August 1998, a man tried to kidnap a seven-year-old boy at Heston service station on the M4 and in 1999 a 14-year-old boy fought off an attacker who had stalked him as he walked to school in Chertsey, Surrey.

A Surrey Police spokesman said: "We are treating them as a linked investigation. A tentative link has also been made between these two cases and that of Roy Tutill." Police said the suspect was not the same man who was arrested 10 years ago in connection with the murder. A 52-year-old man who had recently been released from prison was questioned but released without charge.

At the time, items of the dead boy's clothing which had been kept in secure storage were sent for DNA testing. Forensic techniques have improved in the intervening decade. The file on the Tutill case, the Surrey force's only unsolved child murder, has never been closed. Last year, following a "cold case review", officers said they were following "a number of new lines of inquiry".

Retired detectives who had worked on the case, including Det Chief Insp Philip "Paddy" Doyle who led the original investigation, were asked to return to work on the new inquiry. Det Supt Dave Cook who is leading the current investigation.said: "The old officers were incredibly helpful."

"They were the vital bridge between the past and present and their thoughts and memories proved a valuable tool in helping us understand what had taken place back then." On the morning he disappeared, Roy hitchhiked 15 miles to his school because he was saving the bus fare his parents gave him.

He left school as usual at 3.30pm with friends and caught a 65 bus to the Bridge Road roundabout at Chessington, three miles away. He was last seen trying to hitch a lift from that spot. When his body was found, the bus ticket was in his trouser pocket and in his blazer was a wallet containing 19s 2d.

The hunt for the killer concentrated on trying to find a man who was seen giving the boy a lift in a silver grey car, later identified as an Austin Cambridge. Mr Doyle, now 85 and living in Ireland, said the major details of the case had always remained fresh in his memory.

He said: "I met Mr and Mrs Tutill several times but sadly they are now deceased. What can you say about parents whose child has been murdered? They were very sad."

Dennis O'Connor, Chief Constable of Surrey, said: "We never give up on old cases. By applying modern policing methods we can reach into the past and hopefully bring justice to the family of the boy."